Off The Record

by Luca Veste

  2. The Battle

  I hid behind a skip full of detritus in an alleyway. In my left hand a Glock semi-automatic pistol. In my right hand a razor sharp commando knife. I winced as I squatted. My opponent was good he’d gotten off a lucky shot within the first five minutes of the battle. The graze on my thigh where a bullet had clipped me bled only lightly, but it hurt like a bitch. VR had reached such an advanced stage that the electrode you inserted into the upload socket at the base of your skull immersed you totally in the virtual environment. It fooled your brain that what you were doing was happening in the real world by manipulating those areas of the brain. All five senses could be used in the virtual. People got addicted to this total immersion. Radio Heads was the nickname for them. It was great for VR sex and any kind of interactive depravity you could imagine but these addicts often starved to death or died from deep vein thrombosis. Battle was a whole different and nerve-wracking proposition. In this harsh world where the Karma Police enforced the law with cold logic, total brutality and ruthless efficiency virtual reality felt like a no consequence escape.

  My synaptic processing feed informed me, almost smugly, that my opponent was now odds on favourite and the betting was flowing against me. I felt my skin itch, even in the virtual environment, as I pictured the nano bots under my skin ready to attack me at any moment. I shook off the image and focused. I needed to be quick or I’d be dead. I threw a flash bang into the alley and turned my back against it. I dashed out of the alley as it exploded. I leapt over the bonnet of a nearby car. A hail of bullets followed me pinging off brickwork. I crouched again gritting my teeth against the pain in my thigh. I needed to conserve ammo until I could get to the next weapons cache. I was in imminent danger so I sheathed my knife and flipped the safety off the Glock. My opponent was too wily to come wandering out of the alley now. He’d try to get behind me. In a crouching run I broke cover and rounded a corner slipping behind a large truck.

  The light in the ruined war torn city was starting to fade. Plumes of smoke kissed the sky on the horizon and I could hear the sound of an occasional shell hitting the ground with a muffled boom. The programmers had worked hard on this environment. It said a lot about my character that I’d chosen a war torn city and not some lush jungle. I didn’t want to think about that.

  I heard running footsteps approaching. I quickly slipped underneath the truck and watched as my opponent ran past the side of the truck. I rolled out from under it and fired aiming high. A shot to the shoulder clipped him and he went flying to the ground from his dead run. As I got to my feet he crawled into a nearby alley. I ran a little closer to his position and flipped the pin from a grenade and lobbed it after him. An explosion ripped out of the alley throwing out little chunks of masonry. I could finish him now. I stalked up to the entrance and crouching down looked into the alley.

  No one there. Damn he was fast.

  I saw a trail of blood on the ground and slowly, carefully set off after him. I changed the clip on the Glock as I tracked him. I wanted to keep a full clip for as long as I had the ammo. I was sent reeling as a fist came out the shadows and smashed into my face. My gun flew from my hand and skittered away down the alley. He stepped from the shadows of a doorway. As I fell my shoulder took the brunt of my fall. I saw him draw a pistol and lunged for his legs dragging him down before he could get a shot at me.

  We grappled on the floor for what seemed like an eternity. All the while my processing node was recalculating the odds of a winner. The betting worldwide flowed back and forth like an invisible tide going in and out. He head-butted me and I felt my nose pop. I twisted to the side and punched him repeatedly in the face. I could feel his strength fading from the blood loss. Yet he fought like a mad thing and as my hands finally closed in a vice like grip around his throat I realised that I didn’t even know his name. His game alias was simply Phantom. I saw the life fade slowly from his eyes as I squeezed. It was him or me I kept telling myself. Him or me. As I lay panting with his corpse rapidly cooling beside me and shells dropping all around the city a beautiful sunset above me slowly faded into night and the game environment slowly shut down.

  3. The Truth

  Back in the real world millions of individuals watched the camera feed as Phantom died. His muscles twitched and he convulsed all over as the assault on his body continued. A long agonising scream ripped from his throat and he slowly died as the last breath left his body.

  I heard the sound of heavy footfalls on the stairs outside my flat. A loud inhuman voice that sounded like a detuned radio boomed from outside my door.

  ‘This is the Karma Police. Open the door. You are charged with the murder of another human. In accordance with the law your sentence will be death. Balance will be restored. All crimes will be punished. You have ten seconds to comply.’

  Now, as they blasted my door into splinters, I realised the fatal well hidden truth. The contest winners were never heard of again, not because they were living a new identity in luxury and sworn to secrecy. They were absent because the Karma Police always collected. They always restored the balance. I was conned by my own greed. There was no pot of gold at end of the virtual rainbow. The cause of my opponents death was me. The stain was on my karma. I would pay the ultimate penalty. I didn’t win, I lost myself. I lost myself.

  BIO: Darren Sant is a 41 year old writer who lives in Hull. His writing often features dark deeds that are offset with humour and the odd uplifting moment. He is pleased to have been published by Byker Books, Pill Hill Press and such classy online fiction sites as the Flash Fiction Offensive, Thrillers Killers ‘N’ Chillers and Shotgun Honey. He has an ongoing series of stories called Tales From The Longcroft Estate with Trestle Press. He can also be found blogging for Close To The Bone, Near To The Knuckle and Daz’s Short Book Reviews.

  SMELLS LIKE TEEN SPIRIT

  By

  Simon Logan

  So Kuba pulls up his hood when he sees the building up ahead, striding past the dark, glass-fronted entrance and ducking into a side alley. He stops at an emergency exit, noticing that the CCTV camera mounted on the wall above him has been turned to point towards the star-filled sky above just as Molly promised. He hesitates before opening the door, his hand hovering over the metal bar for a few moments before pushing down on it.

  And instantly an alarm sounds.

  Shit.

  He has a split-second to decide what to do next but there really is only one choice – he charges inside. Beyond is a stairwell, lit by the dull green an EXIT sign above another door straight ahead. He ignores it and rushes up the stairs as the door swings open to reveal a pair of security guards beyond.

  Kuba takes the steps three at a time, the contents of his backpack clattering as it sways from side to side, the guards shouting at him to stop. He jumps up onto the handrail and swings himself up and across, parkour-like, skipping an entire flight of stairs. He counts each floor as he goes, leaping again and again until his backpack snags on a piece of the railing and he tumbles to the ground. He frees the bag and looks up just in time to see one of the guards, red-faced and out of breath, but with his Taser drawn and pointed at Kuba.

  He pulls the trigger and the electrified barb flies towards the teenager.

  ‘Nixon’s been at it again,’ Tim says as he jogs down the car park’s spiralling ramp. The others are already at the bottom by the entrance barrier, crime scene tape still wrapped around it from when it had been shut months earlier. ‘Defaced one of the pieces over by Linton street. Looks amazing.’

  ‘Mysterious street-artist, my arse ,’ Bobi says as Tim leap-frogs the barrier and very nearly collides with her. ‘It’s the corporates again.’

  ‘Bollocks,’ Tim retorts. ‘Nixon’s real, no doubt about it’.

  ‘It’s anti-marketing marketing , I can assure you,’ Bobi says.

  ‘What d’you think, Kuba? You should know better than any of us,’ Tim says, grinning.

  ‘Don’t be a dick, Tim,’ Bobi snaps.

&
nbsp; Kuba ignores the barb, shrugs. ‘Don’t ask me.’

  ‘How about asking her then?’ Tim says, nodding towards a set of headlights approaching them. ‘Looks like the cool-hunter’s here.’

  A dark-coloured car glides up to entrance and comes to a halt. The woman who gets out is dressed in plain generic gear, everything from her trainers to her watch - even her perfume smells cheap. But they all know that it’s not that she can’t afford name brands, it’s that she can’t afford to be wearing the wrong brand in front of the wrong client.

  ‘Ladies and gents,’ she says.

  ‘Not interested,’ Tim cuts in.

  ‘Actually, I was here to talk to Kuba.’

  ‘He’s not interested either.’

  ‘How about you let him answer for himself?’

  ‘I’m sorry, what makes you think we’re interested in talking to you? What are you, anyway, thirty?’

  ‘What are you, seven?’ Molly snaps back. ‘Not everyone has their daddy’s allowance trundled in on a wheelbarrow by their butler each week. Some of us have to actually earn our money.’

  Molly’s smile is wicked-sharp and Bobi can’t help but snigger despite the cold look she gets from Tim. Before Tim can say anything Kuba steps forward, following Molly back to her car and out of earshot of the other two.

  ‘Got some more work for you if you’re up for it. Has to be tonight though.’

  ‘I can’t,’ Kuba tells her. ‘Maybe first thing in the morning …’

  ‘Tonight. Pay is good.’

  ‘What’s it for?’

  ‘Come on, Kube, you know better than that. Selling products is old school, we...’

  ‘Sell ideals, yeah I know,’ Kuba says, finishing the sentence for her. ‘For who?’

  She smiles, cocking her head to one side in a manner which is so endearing it is certainly rehearsed. She leans in conspiratorially. ‘Let’s just say that I’m only asking you because we care.’

  He looks right at her. ‘Okay.’

  ‘Good,’ she says, handing him a small, unmarked envelope. ‘Go get your stuff. I’ll call you shortly.’

  It may be a flat on the fourteenth-floor of a solitary high-rise in the middle of an expanse of waste ground and torn-down razorwire fences but home is home.

  ‘Just me,’ he calls out when he enters.

  His mother is hunched over the kitchen table, magazines and newspapers spread out before her. She’s cutting out all the competitions and vouchers she can find and piling them up on one side but even with a brief glance Kuba can see that most are expired. He kisses her on the head but she doesn’t look up or even seem to notice that he’s there and so he knows that she’s remembered to take her medications. Not the ones she needs, of course, but the ones she’s been given.

  He looks in at Sophie, the nightlight on the wall above her bathing her in a soft pink light. He lifts the sheet draped across her and leans in, sniffing her to check that his mother has remembered to change the child’s nappy this time. He replaces the sheet and uses one finger to gently replace the dummy which has fallen from the baby’s mouth.

  He closes the bedroom door then flicks through a pile of letters stacked up in the kitchen, tosses aside red-stamped bills and threatening bank letters until he finds what he is looking for. The letter arrived a few days earlier and consists of only three paragraphs, each one as boilerplate as the next.

  We regret to inform you that due to Clause 24b of your insurance agreement …

  He reads no further than that first sentence. Folds it back up then sits down next to his mother, silently watching her with her cuttings, just wanting to be near her, until his phone goes.

  Each time she calls it’s a different number but he knows before he picks up that it’s Molly.

  She gives him the instructions he needs then he hangs up. He quickly gathers his paints from his room and stuffs them into a backpack along with the envelope Molly gave him.

  ‘Gotta head out for a bit but I won’t be long,’ he says.

  His mother continues her cutting.

  Kuba throws himself backwards and the Taser’s barb flies past him, smacking into the wall behind him. The alarm still ringing, he grabs his backpack, spins around, and continues his sprint up the stairs. The guard fights to untangle his weapon’s electrified thread as his partner finally catches up and pushes past him.

  Kuba makes it to the 27th floor and bursts through the exit door there, emerging onto a roof which tops the lower, broader part of the building. The final ten floors continue on up above him and he effortlessly pulls himself onto a ladder bolted to the wall next to the door, then onto a vent higher up. He continues his climb along pipes and inch-wide ledges, pausing only when a guard finally bursts out of the door below.

  Kuba holds himself still as the guard, sweating and having lost his hat, scans the roof for any sign of the trespasser then, not noticing him, charges back into the stairwell again. Once the man is gone Kuba climbs another few metres to the spot Molly had told him about and as he looks out across the city he can see why it has been chosen. The message will be seen for miles.

  He hooks his backpack onto a piece of pipe emerging from the wall then unzips the bag and takes out Molly’s envelope. Whatever words are scrawled on the piece of paper inside will have no doubt been subject to weeks, possibly months, of rigorous audience testing and market research, honed precisely for maximum effect.

  He takes out his paints, puts on his mask and prepares to go to work.

  Kuba sits on top of a bench in the middle of a plaza surrounded by corporate steel-and-glass structures, his backpack at his feet, his mask hanging from his neck.

  He looks up at the building he has just escaped from, his graffiti now emblazoned across the wall and ready to be properly revealed once the morning’s light comes up. It’ll be removed before the day is out but by that point it will have already gone viral. People will have mentioned it to co-workers, camera phones will have captured it and, as everyone tries to figure out the meaning behind the message, the meme will spread like a plague.

  In his hand is Molly’s envelope, still unopened. He tears it into pieces then drops it into a garbage bin beside him. Molly will be pissed, of course she will. But fuck her. And fuck her money.

  He reaches into his backpack and takes out another envelope, this one containing the letter he had taken from home. He unfolds it and at the top is a logo, the words Bryant Weiland & Calder Healthcare in a sober typeface and then beneath them, in a more elaborate script and with the first letter of each word emboldened, the tagline Because We Care.

  We regret to inform you that …

  His mother’s final appeal refused, her last chance gone.

  Kuba supposes that the work will be attributed to Nixon, whether he really exists or not. Molly’s firm will want to deflect attention from themselves and the city’s graffiti gangs will be eager to further inflate the inspiring myth. So be it. As Molly herself says, it’s all about selling ideals, not products.

  He picks up his bag and hooks it over his shoulder, ready to head home, but before he walks away he stops and takes one last look at the giant letters sprayed onto the wall high above him.

  Clause 24b.

  BIO: Simon Logan writes Industrial Fiction, and is the author of two novels, ‘Pretty Little Things To Fill Up The Void’, and ‘Katja From The Punk Band’. He has also released three collections of short stories. He has two new novels forthcoming, namely ‘Guerra’ and ‘Lovejunky’. More information can be found at www.coldandalone.com

  COMFORTABLY NUMB

  BY

  LUCA VESTE

  I was a bag snatcher. Not for long, but long enough to make a few quid, and get good at it. I’d done some other jobs…shoplifting, burglary, stuff like that. But, bag snatching was the one job I was good at. People used to say I’d amount to nothin’, well I was makin’ a shitload more dosh than the rest of the nobheads I went to school with.

  The shitty amount I got off the dole didn’t
go far. Lucky if it lasted two days. So I had to find alternative means of support. Started off just nicking stuff in shops, and selling it on after. Goin’ round pubs and that with a bag full of goodies. Go down to Sports Direct in town, nick a load of trackies and sell ‘em half price. Used to make quite a few quid. Then they installed cameras and bought in security, and it got a bit harder to get away with. Had to move on in the end. Too many eyes watchin’ me.

  Made a bit from robbin’ people next to cash machines. Wait ‘til they’re on their own, and as they were walkin’ away, usually counting the cash just to make sure the machine hadn’t robbed them, just grabbing the notes and running. Most of the time I was well away by the time they’d realised what’d happened.

  I was quick ya see. Used to run the 100 metres under 12 seconds at school. Probably coulda gone somewhere with that. But found weed and girls, and that was that. Even then, after a few years and a lot of weed and cigs, I could still outrun those fat, Maccies eating bastards.

  So I moved onto bag snatching. Just every now and again when I needed it. A few times a week. Got picked up by the bizzies a few times, but always got let off. Minor robbery really. Wasn’t like I touched the girls or nothin’. Just grabbed the bag and fuckin’ pegged it.

  Was quite easy to do. Just grab the strap and run. Most of the time they’re too shocked to do anythin’. Sometimes you’d get the odd bitch who’d be on your tail, but I hadn’t been caught by one yet. Didn’t fancy some birds nails in my eyes.